Out to air extractor

[James Higgon]

Hello. I have a trotec rayjet and a bofa ad350 extractor. I have done some wood work using the extractor but it is clogging the filters far too quickly for it to be economically viable. So I am after an out to air filter for when I am cutting wood so save on the costs of the filters . The rayjet is only a small 35w laser so I assume the extractor doesn't need to be anything too hardcore. Do you have any suggestions, it needs to be available in the UK. Many thanks for your help

[Raphael Weil]

I figured the commercial ones would be too expensive so I built mine with the help of Dan's thread. Is that possible for you? Certainly cuts the costs down, but I wouldn't say it's an easy build unless you're decently handy. If I had to build a second one it would be much easier now.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Depends where you are James, Environmental Health get pretty twitchy about extract to air in built up areas

[Henri Sallinen]

Remember that when you extract outside, you always suck the air out of your working space. You'll have to allow air to flow into the space as much as it flows out. When you use the extractor, you are just circulating the air inside your workspace rather than pushing it out of it. Just a tip to remember!

The reason I'm saying this is that we can't vent outside since we are in a commercial space which has some kind of automated air flow (or air conditioner? I don't know for sure what's it called in a larger scale). If we would exhaust out, it would mess up the airflow of the entire building because we would be moving such large ammounts of air past the air conditioning machines..

[James Higgon]

It's only for a few small wooden pieces I'll be doing every so often. The rest I'll run with my bofa. It's legal to burn wood isn't it, is there a difference when lasering it?

[Henri Sallinen]

You would think that, but burning wood is rarely done with business in mind unless you are talking about energy companies, which do have some sort of regulations. You'll have to do some digging to see what they think of it in your area. Or you can plead into not knowing if some one starts asking questions..

[Dave Sheldrake]

It's only for a few small wooden pieces I'll be doing every so often. The rest I'll run with my bofa. It's legal to burn wood isn't it, is there a difference when lasering it?

Makes no difference, it's classed as an industrial process so venting to atmosphere can have EH on your doorstep. Had a young girl last week that got a visit, they are pretty fair and do give you a chance to change it rather than prosecute right away.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Or you can plead into not knowing if some one starts asking questions..

Sadly not knowing the law isn't a valid defence the tend to accept Henri

[Henri Sallinen]

Sadly not knowing the law isn't a valid defence the tend to accept Henri

True. You can only hope in a situation like this the other half gives you a change, like happened with the little girl you mentioned..